Friday, October 12, 2007

Staging the huts - two steps forward and one step back

We found a site for Penguin Ranch and now the people at McMurdo have to put the camp together for us. All our huts are going to be put in a line and dragged into place. Each hut has a set of skis underneath, so it isn't as difficult as it sounds. The sea ice is flat and relatively smooth.

Paul, Cass and Jessica are watching the huts being moved into line from the top of the Crary lab.

Here are some of our huts in a line about to dragged out to our site several miles away on the sea ice. The huts are on frozen ocean, not ground.

Here is one of our huts with Cass in front of it.

This strange structure below is our new sleep hut. The sides fold down and you essentially have a boxcar to haul. It's not ready to be taken to our site, which is a little worrisome.

This is Paul and Cory in front of the sleep hut. I think that this type of hut/tent is used for emergency medical facilities. You can see the skylights in the ceiling -- not the greatest thing to have in a sleep hut since the sun does not set at this time of the year.

Here are the huts being dragged out by a tractor.

Addendum: The camp set up has been halted. When dragging out the huts, the work force found an area of thin ice that they can't cross with their heavy vehicles, so we are dead in the water until we find either an alternate route or a different camp site.

Kooyman, G.L., and Ponganis, P.J. 2004. The icing of external recorders during the polar winter. In Naito, Y. Bio-Logging Science. Memoirs of the National Institute of Polar Research, Special Issue No. 58: 183-187. National Institute of Polar Research. Tokyo.